The Demon Girl

So-called ‘muthi-murders’ are all too common in South Africa – sometimes, they are genuinely committed by people interested in body parts for witchcraft. Sometimes, they provide the police with a wild-goose chase, leading them away from the more usual motives.

In July 2012, a young girl’s body was found in Sweetwaters, a location near Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal. She had her eyes and ‘various chunks of flesh’ removed from her body, she was bound hand and foot, and she had been dumped in a water tank near a church. The story got even more horrifying as the days went by – this 12 year old had been complaining about the voices of ‘demons’ troubling her and had run away from home, leaving behind a note explaining that she didn’t want them to afflict her new-born sister. It turned out that, in all probability, it was actually not her note at all, but the work of an itinerant preacher who claimed to be healing her of her affliction.